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After months of sitting out of the flurry of mergers and acquisitions between insurers and providers, Anthem has made its first move by announcing it will acquire Aspire, the largest non-hospice, community-based palliative care provider in the U.S.

The House approved legislation to allow terminally ill the “right to try” experimental drugs not yet approved by the FDA on a largely partisan vote, sending the bill to a supportive President Donald Trump.

Approximately 29.3 million Americans were uninsured in 2017—a slight but insignificant increase from the year before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the uninsured rate did rise among states which rejected the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Of the 247 emergency room (ER) physicians who responded to the ACEP poll, only 6 percent said their department is “completely” prepared for surge capacity in the wake of a disaster or mass casualty incident.

A poll conducted by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) found most medical practice professionals aren’t aware of the direct primary care (DPC) model where patients pay a flat fee in exchange for easier access to their primary care doctor.

Direct federal funding for abortions has been prohibited by Congress for decades, but conservative lawmakers have sought to deny all federal funding to groups like Planned Parenthood for having any involvement in abortion services.

Vermont has become the first state to pass a law to allow prescription drugs to be imported from Canada, but the plan still has to be approved by HHS—a tall order considering HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s comments that pharmaceutical imports are a “gimmick” and may be unsafe.

Primary care physicians and non-physician practitioners have seen their compensation rise more rapidly than specialists, which the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) said is evidence of the worsening shortage of primary care doctors.

A judge in Riverside County, California, ruled the state legislature violated the law by passing the state’s aid-in-dying act during a special session limited to healthcare funding, giving the state’s attorney general five days to respond or else it would again be illegal for terminal patients to be given life-ending drugs by physicians.

The “zero year” of the OneCare Vermont system, operated much like an accountable care organization (ACO) on a statewide level, saw the program come within 1 percent of its financial target. With the model now expanded to cover about 18 percent of the state’s residents, other states are watching closely to see if it could be implemented elsewhere in the U.S.

The Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP) has released the 2018 edition of its annual quality report, illustrating how deficiencies were most commonly found at the hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) it inspects.

Made up of more than a dozen Amazon employees and led by manager Rachel Jiang—a veteran of Facebook and Microsoft who has been with Amazon since 2013—the “health & wellness team” within Alexa's division has been working on how the voice assistant can adapt to the requirements of HIPAA.

After reporting nearly $18 million in savings for the employers current participating in its bundled payment programs for spinal surgeries and joint replacements, UnitedHealth Group announced it will expand the program to nine additional markets.

The potential of genetic testing for chronic disease is substantial—and these possible positives are understood by many primary care providers (PCPs). Still, many feel unprepared to deal with patients at high risk for such conditions, while others questioned their ability to interpret genetic testing results.

In the latest article in Vox’s series on hospital billing practices, Jessica Pell told a story that isn’t a one-off case: She went to an emergency room (ER), received a minimal amount of help and still got saddled with a massive bill.

Ascension, the largest nonprofit health system in the U.S., has announced a new joint venture with Australia-based hospital operator Ramsay Health Care Limited to create a global supply chain to reduce costs for Ascension’s 2,600 sites of care and the more than 230 facilities Ramsay operates in six countries.

A report commissioned by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association found it would cost the state’s hospitals nearly $1 billion a year to comply with a proposed ballot initiative to set limits on the number of patients a hospital can assign to a nurse per shift.

Years of gains in insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are beginning to reverse, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund which found 15.5 percent of working age adults are uninsured, an increase of about four million people since 2016.

Managed care and Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange insurer Molina Healthcare said its first quarter profits “exceed expectations” after raising premiums for its marketplace plans by about 60 percent and isn’t ruling out returning to markets in Utah and Wisconsin, where it previously offered coverage.